Claim
On 21st September 2020 Sir Patrick Vallance said that UK would see 50,000 cases a day by mid-October unless action is taken.
Snopes Rating – None
Full Fact Rating – Partial
https://fullfact.org/health/vallance-growth-rates/
Our Rating – False
Justification
All of the main stream media used Patrick Vallance’s statement incorrectly:
BBC:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/health-54235708
ITV:
Metro:
MSN:
Guardian:
Patrick Vallance prefaced all of his comments as speculation that was not a prediction or prophecy, despite it being reported as such.
He said in his statement
At the moment we think that the epidemic is doubling roughly every 7 days. It could be a little bit longer, maybe a little bit shorter, but let’s say roughly every seven days.
If, and that’s quite a big if, but if that continues unabated, and this grows doubling every seven days then what you see of course, let’s say there were 5000 today, it would be 10000 next week, 20000 the week after, 40000 the week after.
And you can see that by mid October, if that continued, you would end up with something like 50000 cases in the middle of October per day.
He then suffixes his statement by stating:
This is not a prediction
Evidence
The link to the video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji2CGVehQNU
His statement is embedded below:
It remains unknown as to why he thought the words of this statement should be spoken, and why it was a good idea to broadcast easily misconstrued information.
